The World Cup: An uneven playing field

Jun 25 / World Cup 2014

Two of our most recent articles highlight the inequality present at this year's World Cup -- teams whose life at home, while they may stack fair on the pitch, consists of vast differences in child nutrition, maternal mortality, access to education, opportunity to participate in organised sport, and, as this article highlights, population size and wealth.

A country’s chance of winning the World Cup is strongly related to the size of its population and how rich that population is. Countries with bigger populations have a larger pool from which talented players can be sourced and richer countries are better able to nurture their players.

All, except two (Uruguay and Colombia), of the top 15 ranked World Cup teams are from countries that have populations of over 8 million people and income per person over USD$12,000 a year. These countries have among the highest incomes and largest populations in the world and appear in the top right of the chart below.

Between the World Cup countries, an uneven playing field still exists. The richest qualifying country, Switzerland, has around 80 times more income per person, than the poorest qualifying country, Cameroon. While the largest country in terms of population, the United States, has almost 100 times more people that the smallest country in terms of population, Uruguay.